The Three Truths
by Kenkaya
Summary: Jet told many lies, but the worst lies were the ones he told to himself. Character study; slightly AU Book 2 insert.


**Title:** Three Truths

 **Author:** Kenkaya

 **Genre(s):** Drama/Angst

 **Type:** Slightly AU Book 2 insert, Character study

 **Rating:** PG-13, Teen (for descriptive violence)

 **Pairing(s):** None

 **Summary:** Jet told many lies, but the worst lies were the ones he told to himself.

 **Disclaimer:** The characters and world of _Avatar: The Last Airbender_ belongs to Bryan Konietzko, Michael Dante DiMartino, Nickelodeon, and other artistic/corporate someones who aren't me.

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" _There are three truths: my truth, your truth, and the truth." – Ancient Chinese Proverb_

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Jet told many lies in his short life.

He lied to the Avatar, to his freedom fighters, to Katara… but those lies were a necessary evil. Everyone knew that the Fire Nation needed to pay, to be stopped for the greater good. War didn't segregate between innocent and guilty. Justice, he learned at a young age, was an obscure, gray entity.

If only she could have understood, but one look at her idealistic smile told him she wouldn't. So he lied, let her and the Avatar believe that villages filled with good, honest people didn't get in the way.

Like _his_ village did.

He could still remember clearly, even through the blur of time and an eight year-old's tears, every detail of the night his village was attacked. Roofs consumed by fire, childhood friends screaming as heated walls crumbled inward, the world painted entirely in flickering shades of orange and black. But his most vivid memory, the most horrific, was of the firebender: a large muscular man with a long slick mustache looming over his beaten father.

Jet remembered his father's quietly defiant expression back then, proud despite a split lip and swollen cheek. In that moment, his father seemed noble: a good, honest man standing up against evils much greater than himself. A man who was nothing more than a simple farmer, who secretly showed his son old hook swords stashed under the barn floorboards and told bedtime stories every night. Wonderful stories about dragons and fire he had to swear never to repeat outside. When his father spoke, fire had seemed beautiful.

Fire lost its beauty that night; devoured when the firebender lifted his beaten father by the hair and spat hateful words.

 _Coward. Traitor. Snake._

Jet could only stand and stare as the meaty hand clutching his father's long brown hair burst into flames. The boy could only cry, a tragic mirror to the dying screams issued from blistering lips. The air, thick with ash and course against his tan skin, carried the acrid, cloying scent of charred hair and flesh. There was nothing he could do.

Then the firebender had turned towards him, dropping the burning, twitching body of Jet's father into the dirt. Heat waves shimmered around them, amplifying the soldiers intimidating approach. The child had stumbled back, but his knees wobbled- muscles seized up. Streams of tears and thick snot dripped down his face. He had to run. The firebender was coming. He was going to die like his father.

But the child didn't die. He raised his arms reflexively, too terrified to do anything else, when stray flames flared up between the two. Jet found the adrenaline-fueled strength to run then: into the woods where he would grow up, build a guerilla army, and dream of revolution…

… Where a heartbroken girl would freeze him to a tree and ask, " _why?"_ with tears in her sheltered blue eyes. The teenager Jet had become took pride in all his accomplishments (his father was a proud man too, proud of even his simple field work). But, watching a fourteen year-old cry over the mass-murder she nearly committed in ignorance, he felt regret over his actions for the first time. At least his Freedom Fighters had chosen their amoral path; Katara and Aang had been deprived of that choice.

Still, as Jet watched the Avatar walk away with his two companions, he felt irrationally angry. They had power! They could do so much more against the Fire Nation yet they refused to wield it! If he had that power…

… _The power to destroy. Just like the firebender._

Jet woke up several mornings after they left from a familiar, vivid nightmare. He sat on the rough wood floor of his tree house bedroom, remembering his father's final moments and finally realizing the horror of what he'd almost done. In order to destroy the enemy, he was becoming more like them. The teenager decided then and there that "at any cost" really meant "at any cost but _that_."

He spent the next couple months disbanding his Freedom Fighters. They traveled across the Earth Kingdom, through flat green fields and cragged grey mountains, searching for direction and a place to start fresh. By the time Jet reached Full Moon Bay, only his most loyal followers (Smellerbee and Longshot) remained. Ba Sing Se was a giant city: so monstrously huge many referred to its streets as labyrinths within labyrinths. The most fanciful tales said people had disappeared in those labyrinths, lost for days in the great maze of back alleyways only to reemerge without realizing the passage of time. He didn't believe those superstitious stories, but a city capable of inspiring them (with a solid stone wall to keep the Fire Nation out) sounded like the perfect place to start anew. The weeks-long wait for their ferry only firmed his conviction.

Then, on the boat, he met Lee. The boy was viciously scarred, in ways both visible and not, but Jet could feel them- could sense a pain so similar to his own. He looked past the angry red scar and extended an invitation to the greedy captain's kitchen. After their heist, feasting on deck with other refugees and high on camaraderie, the reformed revolutionary held his hand out to the pale, defaced boy with a simple yet dangerous offer. An offer worded eerily like the one he gave his first Freedom Fighter.

Lee's refusal hurt, though Jet was loath to admit it. He had grown attached to the scarred boy in a scarily short span of time: saw so much of his own anger and internal struggles reflected back in those sharp yellow eyes. His second attempt at the city docks was rebuffed as well, but Jet smiled through the disappointment and left his proposal open. He would not give up, could not give up on someone he felt such a strong kinship to, but he understood when Lee's gaze subconsciously darted to his uncle Mushi. The gentle-natured old man complained dramatically about his cold tea over their talk and Jet found himself remembering a long burned-out home filled with laughter and his father's booming voice: the cadence of which oddly resembled Mushi's. Those happy memories drilled home the importance of family, something he learned the hard way was far too precious to take for granted. So, Jet reluctantly decided to let Lee go.

Until he saw wisps of steam curling up from Mushi's teacup.

His vision tunneled at the sight, but not enough to miss the flicker of panic across Lee's face. _Firebender, firebender_ , spun circles through his head, a haunting accusation. Memories of family gave way to ones of fire and an eight year-old voice desperately screaming- _no, not like them… nothing like them_. Jet walked away, letting red-hot angry wash away truth- to color that day when the firebender soldier strutted toward him with unnameable intent. When an eight year-old Jet raised his arms in a futile defensive gesture and the fire _moved_.

 _A coincidence_ , he reminded himself. _A coincidence… only a coincidence_.

Belatedly, he realized Smellerbee was speaking to him. He didn't register the words; spoke over her instead. His voice cracked around something thick and raw in his throat.

"Firebenders. Those two are firebenders."

Jet told many lies, but the worst lies were the ones he told to himself.

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End (TBC?)

 **A/N:** I am actually working on a continuation to this… but since it's pretty much veering into full on AU territory (and I like how this part can fit somewhat comfortably into canon) I will be posting it separately as a sequel. Hope you enjoyed this installment.


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